The Guidance Department & Crisis Intervention Counsellors
The guidance department currently provides support to around 260 students at Ridgewood High School, helping with a wide range of issues that a pupil may be dealing with. The guidance counsellors offer academic counselling, personal counselling, and a lot of college advisement (particularly because of the schools location right outside New York City).
It’s really a lot of interaction…interactions with the teachers, interactions with students, interactions with parents. We have a very involved community here…It’s a very student centred environment and we care about the kids. My own personal philosophy is just kinda treat the kids like if they were your kid, how would you like to treat your own? Peter Burkard – Guidance Counsellor, Ridgewood High School (RHS)
There are many issues which students may approach the guidance department about, including pressure placed on them by parents.
I’ve had meetings with students where the students are in tears because their parents are pushing them to do things that they don’t want to do or their not interested in, or their not letting the student take the lead and be independent…definitely I’ve seen quite a bit. You know, it’s depression and anxiety, I would not say we’re higher than the average but we’ve got our share of it. Tara Donnelly – School Psychologist, RHS
In addition to the support provided by the guidance department, Ridgewood has two trained social workers who act as Crisis Intervention Counsellors, who also work at middle school in addition to the high school.
My job is to provide supportive mental health counselling to kids and their families to address psychosocial sources of barriers to learning. If a kid is having a tough time coming to school, if a kid appears to be depressed or anxious, if there’s a swirling concern from staff or family about how a kid is doing, we are usually called in and try to build a relationship with that person to try and help them talk through it. Kevin Feeley – Crisis Intervention Counsellor, RHS
The post came about because there were a number of pupils who were routinely getting into trouble due to problems involving things such as drugs, mental health, or a troubled home life.
We would give a punishment, but the punishment really wouldn’t do anything to sort of address the underlying problems. And so the psychologist just said "Try and get the kids to talk to you and try and get the kids to kind of express what is going on.” Kevin Feeley – Crisis Intervention Counsellor, RHS
They work very closely with other departments and members of staff, as well as with families of pupils. The Crisis Intervention Counsellors may have meetings with parents, and they have also participated in parents groups to discuss issues such as alcohol abuse or mental health in the community.
The crisis counsellors work very, very closely with the grade level advisors and administrators…We work very, very closely with the Child Study Team across the hall who take care of the kids with special education needs. Lauren and I both try and work as much as we can with parents and families, whether it’s informally or formally…Yeah we have a lot of involvement in the community outside of the school. Kevin Feeley – Crisis Intervention Counsellor, RHS
Kevin feels that the counsellors play an important role in supporting these pupils, and that in future they would benefit from extending this support to elementary school pupils, who often experience anxiety. One type of support they offer is helping kids think about the factors which contribute to future interests and options through asking questions such as “What does your favourite cousin do?” “Do you like that?” “What kind of TV shows are you watching?” “What attracts you to those things?” Encouraging pupils to engage in this type of self-reflection may be very beneficial for them, and allow them to better understand themselves.
A student’s educational experience is a story. And they’re telling a story. And they don’t quite know what the outcome is or don’t quite know what the finishing chapters are because they right neck deep in the middle of it. I think that my job and to a certain degree all our jobs is to help them tell that story for themselves. Help them figure that story out, that narrative.” Kevin Feeley – Crisis Intervention Counsellor, RHS
Child Study Team
The Child Study Team at Ridgewood High School is responsible for supporting those with special education needs.
It’s a federal law; every school has to have a child study team. They may not have a child study team on staff, some districts do it differently. They may have a centralized child study team that will go out to the schools. But this is federal law that’s mandated that special education services have to be available to students and schools have a mandate to find the special education students. Tara Donnelly – School Psychologist, RHS
The law sets specific criteria for pupils to be classified as eligible for special education, and the Child Study Team use that to identify those that need support.
I have a caseload ofstudents who are classified...I help to develop their I.E.P. which stands for Individualised Education Plan and help to implement that. As the school social worker I also do evaluations - so for instance if a student is struggling in the building and a teacher or a guidance counsellor or a parent comes to us and we decide that we need to evaluate them to see if they have any kind of specific disability or certain educational needs that are not being met we may do an evaluation. Karen Mellozzo – School Social Worker, RHS
While the guidance department deals with a larger number of pupils, the Child Study Team may have a more demanding job due to the diverse range of needs they deal with.
[The] Child Study Team…have a case load of say maybe 40 or 50 students. Guidance would have a case load, we have about 260 students and their job might even be more overwhelming than ours because those 50 students have probably a lot more issues then our 260 even though they overlap. Peter Burkard – Guidance Counsellor, RHS
The team have to be prepared to meet a huge range of needs – including those who are not able to function within the normal school building.
On my particular caseload I have two very, very disabled [students], both physically and cognitively…and then I have a number of students with serious psychiatric issues that they also can’t come to school in this building. They need to be in a really clinical type of setting, and then a whole bunch of people in between. Tara Donnelly – School Psychologist, RHS
There are different categories into learning disabilities, there could be a reading disability, of reading fluency, it could be a comprehension issue, it could be a math reasoning problem, it could be a math calculation problem, it could be a problem in written expression, oral expression, so we run the gamut and that's just with learning disabilities. Andrea Schechter – Learning Disability Teacher Consultant, RHS
In addition to the classification of ‘learning disabled’ there are other categories such as ‘other health impaired’ which would include conditions such as hyperactivity disorder, and ‘emotionally disturbed’ for students who suffer from mental health issues such as major anxiety or depression. There are specific programmes in place for certain groups of pupils, such as the SAIL programme which is for those with major cognitive impairments (See ASN Support Programmes Case Study). Pupils may also need support with emotional problems they are dealing with.
It could be you know someone’s just really struggling with depression symptoms and they need to see somebody immediately, it could be that a student has a personal crisis in their own life - a sick parent, death of a parent, death of a friend. Tara Donnelly – School Psychologist, RHS
Sometimes events may occur which require support to be offered on a larger scale; as was the case in Ridgewood High School following the 9/11 terrorist attacks:
This was a community tragedy and we needed to address it as a community not in a small way. So I was pulled in to help plan how the school was going to respond to things the next day because we really didn’t know what we were going to walk in to, what we were going to find. We had a lot of parents that worked down that area and we really didn’t know. Tara Donnelly – School Psychologist, RHS
The Child Study Team has what they call a ‘child find responsibility’ which means it is their responsibility to do all they can to identify students who may have disabilities. Often students will be referred to them by guidance counsellors, teachers or parents if they are concerned a student is having academic or emotional problems.
Once that happens we then meet with the student and the family along with all of the team members here…the school social worker, we also have a school psychologist and we have two learning consultants in the team. We all meet together with the guidance counsellor, the student and the family and we talk about what the issues are and make a decision as to whether or not we’re going to evaluate. Karen Mellozzo – School Social Worker, RHS
If they are deemed eligible for special education the next stage is to develop an Individualized Education Plan for the pupil which tries to address their needs. Due to the wide range of needs which the pupils may require, the plans will often be very specialised.
I get some of the kids with more emotional issues but I also have students that on my caseload are just straight learning disabilities and every single one of the students looks different and every one of those students has a different need and my job is to make sure I know what that is and I communicate it to staff. Tara Donnelly – School Psychologist, RHS
We’re considering what the students’ strengths and weaknesses are...in this particular case where their area of disability is and how to accommodate that, how to provide support for them, how to capitalise on their strengths, how to accommodate weaknesses and help them to become stronger students. Karen Mellozzo – School Social Worker, RHS
The I.E.P. is a useful tool for the teachers to understand exactly what the pupil may require, and tailor their teaching methods accordingly.
The easy way to say it is we give strategies to teachers to help teachers teach a little better or a little differently, since the students that we service typically have different types of needs. Andrea Schechter – Learning Disability Teacher Consultant, RHS
Tara and Andrea described different ways that teachers may have to adapt their classes: for example, asking teachers not expect pupils to take notes while they’re teaching, extended time for some students, written class notes, or even a specialised home instruction programme if a pupil is just out of hospital.
In this department it’s really very, very individualized, what it is that they need and every student comes completely different so you may have some that have programmes that are very similar but others that are just very, very different. Tara Donnelly – School Psychologist, RHS
To effectively design and implement an IEP the Child Study Team needs to be in regular discussions with several people surrounding the child. ‘We’re, you know, collaborating with teachers, parents and students on a regular basis trying to help them to deal with whatever their particular issues are’ (Karen Mellozzo – Social Worker).
The team also works very closely with the guidance department:
It’s a very good environment for us to meet and discuss, what’s Johnny missing what’s Susan missing - how can we help them without enabling them to be disabled? We want the kids to be their own advocate so we teach a lot of self-advocacy too. There’s a lot of communication between both departments. Peter Burkard – Guidance Counsellor, Ridgewood High School
For the IEPs to be effective it is very important that the teaching staff are aware of what support they need to provide and make sure they see that through, which requires good communication with the teaching faculty. Also there are situations where the staff may require support as well:
If it’s kind of a community wide thing usually the teachers are just as upset as the students and so I work with a lot of the staff in that way too. Tara Donnelly – School Psychologist, RHS
It is suggested by some that while this type of individualised support is beneficial, it may be difficult for pupils to adapt to a future environment where this kind of support is available. However, Andrea mentioned that they specifically look at options for support when the pupil has left school, such as Section 504 Plans which are IEPs to support those at college.
We basically explain to the student what the whole process is and we encourage them, even if they feel that they're not gonna need support, that they go ahead once they get into the college of their choice on their own merit, that they reach out to the office of students with disabilities…to identify themselves as a student who might need extra help, so that they can have a plan in place should they need the assistance. Andrea Schechter – Learning Disability Teacher Consultant, RHS
The Child Study Team, Guidance Department and Crisis Intervention Counsellors work together to try and support the pupils at Ridgewood High School. For this to work they need to develop a good relationship with the pupil as an individual, so that their time in school can be tailored to their specific needs.
And I think that the students in our department do so well because there is that personalisation, and the teachers really do take the time to get to know the students and to really meet them where they are and not just expect that every student comes in at the same place, now there’s expectations for learning differences and that's why I feel that this school district is so successful in meeting the needs of different learners. Andrea Schechter – Learning Disability Teacher Consultant, RHS
The Guidance Department & Crisis Intervention Counsellors
The guidance department currently provides support to around 260 students at Ridgewood High School, helping with a wide range of issues that a pupil may be dealing with. The guidance counsellors offer academic counselling, personal counselling, and a lot of college advisement (particularly because of the schools location right outside New York City).
It’s really a lot of interaction…interactions with the teachers, interactions with students, interactions with parents. We have a very involved community here…It’s a very student centred environment and we care about the kids. My own personal philosophy is just kinda treat the kids like if they were your kid, how would you like to treat your own?
Peter Burkard – Guidance Counsellor, Ridgewood High School (RHS)
There are many issues which students may approach the guidance department about, including pressure placed on them by parents.
I’ve had meetings with students where the students are in tears because their parents are pushing them to do things that they don’t want to do or their not interested in, or their not letting the student take the lead and be independent…definitely I’ve seen quite a bit. You know, it’s depression and anxiety, I would not say we’re higher than the average but we’ve got our share of it.
Tara Donnelly – School Psychologist, RHS
In addition to the support provided by the guidance department, Ridgewood has two trained social workers who act as Crisis Intervention Counsellors, who also work at middle school in addition to the high school.
My job is to provide supportive mental health counselling to kids and their families to address psychosocial sources of barriers to learning. If a kid is having a tough time coming to school, if a kid appears to be depressed or anxious, if there’s a swirling concern from staff or family about how a kid is doing, we are usually called in and try to build a relationship with that person to try and help them talk through it.
Kevin Feeley – Crisis Intervention Counsellor, RHS
The post came about because there were a number of pupils who were routinely getting into trouble due to problems involving things such as drugs, mental health, or a troubled home life.
We would give a punishment, but the punishment really wouldn’t do anything to sort of address the underlying problems. And so the psychologist just said "Try and get the kids to talk to you and try and get the kids to kind of express what is going on.”
Kevin Feeley – Crisis Intervention Counsellor, RHS
They work very closely with other departments and members of staff, as well as with families of pupils. The Crisis Intervention Counsellors may have meetings with parents, and they have also participated in parents groups to discuss issues such as alcohol abuse or mental health in the community.
The crisis counsellors work very, very closely with the grade level advisors and administrators…We work very, very closely with the Child Study Team across the hall who take care of the kids with special education needs. Lauren and I both try and work as much as we can with parents and families, whether it’s informally or formally…Yeah we have a lot of involvement in the community outside of the school.
Kevin Feeley – Crisis Intervention Counsellor, RHS
Kevin feels that the counsellors play an important role in supporting these pupils, and that in future they would benefit from extending this support to elementary school pupils, who often experience anxiety. One type of support they offer is helping kids think about the factors which contribute to future interests and options through asking questions such as “What does your favourite cousin do?” “Do you like that?” “What kind of TV shows are you watching?” “What attracts you to those things?” Encouraging pupils to engage in this type of self-reflection may be very beneficial for them, and allow them to better understand themselves.
A student’s educational experience is a story. And they’re telling a story. And they don’t quite know what the outcome is or don’t quite know what the finishing chapters are because they right neck deep in the middle of it. I think that my job and to a certain degree all our jobs is to help them tell that story for themselves. Help them figure that story out, that narrative.”
Kevin Feeley – Crisis Intervention Counsellor, RHS
Child Study Team
The Child Study Team at Ridgewood High School is responsible for supporting those with special education needs.
It’s a federal law; every school has to have a child study team. They may not have a child study team on staff, some districts do it differently. They may have a centralized child study team that will go out to the schools. But this is federal law that’s mandated that special education services have to be available to students and schools have a mandate to find the special education students.
Tara Donnelly – School Psychologist, RHS
The law sets specific criteria for pupils to be classified as eligible for special education, and the Child Study Team use that to identify those that need support.
I have a caseload of students who are classified...I help to develop their I.E.P. which stands for Individualised Education Plan and help to implement that. As the school social worker I also do evaluations - so for instance if a student is struggling in the building and a teacher or a guidance counsellor or a parent comes to us and we decide that we need to evaluate them to see if they have any kind of specific disability or certain educational needs that are not being met we may do an evaluation.
Karen Mellozzo – School Social Worker, RHS
While the guidance department deals with a larger number of pupils, the Child Study Team may have a more demanding job due to the diverse range of needs they deal with.
[The] Child Study Team…have a case load of say maybe 40 or 50 students. Guidance would have a case load, we have about 260 students and their job might even be more overwhelming than ours because those 50 students have probably a lot more issues then our 260 even though they overlap.
Peter Burkard – Guidance Counsellor, RHS
The team have to be prepared to meet a huge range of needs – including those who are not able to function within the normal school building.
On my particular caseload I have two very, very disabled [students], both physically and cognitively…and then I have a number of students with serious psychiatric issues that they also can’t come to school in this building. They need to be in a really clinical type of setting, and then a whole bunch of people in between.
Tara Donnelly – School Psychologist, RHS
There are different categories into learning disabilities, there could be a reading disability, of reading fluency, it could be a comprehension issue, it could be a math reasoning problem, it could be a math calculation problem, it could be a problem in written expression, oral expression, so we run the gamut and that's just with learning disabilities.
Andrea Schechter – Learning Disability Teacher Consultant, RHS
In addition to the classification of ‘learning disabled’ there are other categories such as ‘other health impaired’ which would include conditions such as hyperactivity disorder, and ‘emotionally disturbed’ for students who suffer from mental health issues such as major anxiety or depression. There are specific programmes in place for certain groups of pupils, such as the SAIL programme which is for those with major cognitive impairments (See ASN Support Programmes Case Study). Pupils may also need support with emotional problems they are dealing with.
It could be you know someone’s just really struggling with depression symptoms and they need to see somebody immediately, it could be that a student has a personal crisis in their own life - a sick parent, death of a parent, death of a friend.
Tara Donnelly – School Psychologist, RHS
Sometimes events may occur which require support to be offered on a larger scale; as was the case in Ridgewood High School following the 9/11 terrorist attacks:
This was a community tragedy and we needed to address it as a community not in a small way. So I was pulled in to help plan how the school was going to respond to things the next day because we really didn’t know what we were going to walk in to, what we were going to find. We had a lot of parents that worked down that area and we really didn’t know.
Tara Donnelly – School Psychologist, RHS
The Child Study Team has what they call a ‘child find responsibility’ which means it is their responsibility to do all they can to identify students who may have disabilities. Often students will be referred to them by guidance counsellors, teachers or parents if they are concerned a student is having academic or emotional problems.
Once that happens we then meet with the student and the family along with all of the team members here…the school social worker, we also have a school psychologist and we have two learning consultants in the team. We all meet together with the guidance counsellor, the student and the family and we talk about what the issues are and make a decision as to whether or not we’re going to evaluate.
Karen Mellozzo – School Social Worker, RHS
If they are deemed eligible for special education the next stage is to develop an Individualized Education Plan for the pupil which tries to address their needs. Due to the wide range of needs which the pupils may require, the plans will often be very specialised.
I get some of the kids with more emotional issues but I also have students that on my caseload are just straight learning disabilities and every single one of the students looks different and every one of those students has a different need and my job is to make sure I know what that is and I communicate it to staff.
Tara Donnelly – School Psychologist, RHS
We’re considering what the students’ strengths and weaknesses are...in this particular case where their area of disability is and how to accommodate that, how to provide support for them, how to capitalise on their strengths, how to accommodate weaknesses and help them to become stronger students.
Karen Mellozzo – School Social Worker, RHS
The I.E.P. is a useful tool for the teachers to understand exactly what the pupil may require, and tailor their teaching methods accordingly.
The easy way to say it is we give strategies to teachers to help teachers teach a little better or a little differently, since the students that we service typically have different types of needs.
Andrea Schechter – Learning Disability Teacher Consultant, RHS
Tara and Andrea described different ways that teachers may have to adapt their classes: for example, asking teachers not expect pupils to take notes while they’re teaching, extended time for some students, written class notes, or even a specialised home instruction programme if a pupil is just out of hospital.
In this department it’s really very, very individualized, what it is that they need and every student comes completely different so you may have some that have programmes that are very similar but others that are just very, very different.
Tara Donnelly – School Psychologist, RHS
To effectively design and implement an IEP the Child Study Team needs to be in regular discussions with several people surrounding the child. ‘We’re, you know, collaborating with teachers, parents and students on a regular basis trying to help them to deal with whatever their particular issues are’ (Karen Mellozzo – Social Worker).
The team also works very closely with the guidance department:
It’s a very good environment for us to meet and discuss, what’s Johnny missing what’s Susan missing - how can we help them without enabling them to be disabled? We want the kids to be their own advocate so we teach a lot of self-advocacy too. There’s a lot of communication between both departments.
Peter Burkard – Guidance Counsellor, Ridgewood High School
For the IEPs to be effective it is very important that the teaching staff are aware of what support they need to provide and make sure they see that through, which requires good communication with the teaching faculty. Also there are situations where the staff may require support as well:
If it’s kind of a community wide thing usually the teachers are just as upset as the students and so I work with a lot of the staff in that way too.
Tara Donnelly – School Psychologist, RHS
It is suggested by some that while this type of individualised support is beneficial, it may be difficult for pupils to adapt to a future environment where this kind of support is available. However, Andrea mentioned that they specifically look at options for support when the pupil has left school, such as Section 504 Plans which are IEPs to support those at college.
We basically explain to the student what the whole process is and we encourage them, even if they feel that they're not gonna need support, that they go ahead once they get into the college of their choice on their own merit, that they reach out to the office of students with disabilities…to identify themselves as a student who might need extra help, so that they can have a plan in place should they need the assistance.
Andrea Schechter – Learning Disability Teacher Consultant, RHS
The Child Study Team, Guidance Department and Crisis Intervention Counsellors work together to try and support the pupils at Ridgewood High School. For this to work they need to develop a good relationship with the pupil as an individual, so that their time in school can be tailored to their specific needs.
And I think that the students in our department do so well because there is that personalisation, and the teachers really do take the time to get to know the students and to really meet them where they are and not just expect that every student comes in at the same place, now there’s expectations for learning differences and that's why I feel that this school district is so successful in meeting the needs of different learners.
Andrea Schechter – Learning Disability Teacher Consultant, RHS